Hinton v. Alabama (571 U.S. 263)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided February 24, 2014 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 571 U.S. 263 · 134 S. Ct. 1081
- Decided
- February 24, 2014
- Term
- October Term 2013
- Vote
- 9–0
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
PER CURIAM. In Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984), we held that a criminal defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel is violated if his trial attorney's performance falls below an objective standard of reasonableness and if there is a reasonable probability that the result of the trial would have been different absent the deficient act or omission. Id., at 687-688, 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052. Anthony Ray Hinton, an inmate on Alabama's death row, asks us to decide whether the Alabama courts correctly applied Strickland to his case. We conclude that they did not and hold that Hinton's trial attorney rendered constitutionally deficient performance. We vacate the lower court's judgment and remand the case for reconsideration of whether the attorney's deficient performance was prejudicial. I A In February 1985, a restaurant manager in Birmingham was shot to death in the course of an after-hours robbery of his restaurant. A second manager was murdered during a very similar robbery of another restaurant in July. Then, later in July, a restaurant manager named Smotherman survived another similar robbery-shooting. During each crime, the robber fired two .38 caliber bullets; all six bullets were recovered by police investigators. Smotherman described his assailant to the police, and when the police showed him a photographic array, he picked out…
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